Is Cry Baby John Waters For Kids? (Plus Actual Infant Crying)

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday, and I was pretty sure I was hallucinating. Leo was six weeks old and screaming like I was actively harming him, his tiny face turning a shade of purple I didn't know existed in nature. I was wearing these gray maternity sweatpants—you know the ones, the completely given-up-on-life pants with the mysterious thigh stain—and swaying in the dark while Dave snored loudly in the guest room. I needed a distraction. I needed, like, literally anything to keep my eyes open while I bounced this furious, sweaty potato of a child. So I grabbed the remote, fired up a streaming app, and just clicked on the first thing that looked like it had music.

The movie was Cry-Baby. Directed by John Waters. Starring a very young, very leather-clad Johnny Depp.

I figured, hey, it's a musical, right? Babies like music. My friend's kid—who we all call baby john, well, mostly baby J, but his real name is John—supposedly went to sleep instantly to old Broadway soundtracks. So I hit play, expecting some gentle, rhythmic singing to lull my own little screamer to sleep.

Oh god. That was a mistake.

So yeah, don't show that movie to young kids

If you're desperately googling to figure out if you can watch this movie with your children, let me just save you some time. Absolutely not. I mean, my teenage niece thinks it's hilarious now, but for a toddler or a kid? Hell no. Ten minutes in, there are switchblades, people drinking aggressively from flasks, and this wildly exaggerated French kissing that made me uncomfortable even though I was entirely alone in my living room at 3 AM. Dave actually woke up, came into the room to get a glass of water, took one look at the TV where some teenager was yelling about female anatomy, looked at me bouncing our wailing newborn, and just slowly backed out of the room without saying a word.

It’s deeply satirical. It's making fun of 1950s greaser culture and teen idol movies, and it's 100% rated PG-13 for a reason. If you've a teenager, sure, maybe watch it with them so you can try to explain class divides and campy humor, though they'll probably just roll their eyes at you. Anyway, I shut it off because Leo wasn't calming down anyway, and the chaotic rockabilly music was just making my own heart rate spike.

Dealing with an actual literal screaming human

So I was left in the dark with my very own, real-life cry baby. Maya never did this. When Maya was a newborn, she just kind of existed like a sleepy little potato bug. But Leo? Leo was aggressively unhappy about being alive.

I dragged myself to our doctor, Dr. Evans, who always looks so aggressively rested it makes me want to scream, and begged her to tell me what I was doing wrong. She told me about this thing called PURPLE crying. It stands for something like Peak crying, Unexpected, Resists soothing... I honestly don't remember the rest of the acronym because I was operating on about twenty minutes of sleep. Basically, she said their little nervous systems are just completely half-baked and overwhelmed by the sheer concept of being outside the womb. They aren't manipulating you, they aren't mad at you, they're just completely freaking out about gravity and air.

She said it usually peaks around 6 to 8 weeks. Hearing that didn't make the actual crying stop, obviously, but it did make me feel slightly less like a garbage mom.

I also realized during that phase that Leo was just incredibly sensitive to everything touching his body. If a tag rubbed his neck, it was game over. I eventually swapped all his stiff little outfits for the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit from Kianao. Look, I'll be completely honest with you here—if you buy the white one, it's going to get absolutely ruined the second a blowout happens, which is inevitable, so just buy the darker colors to save your sanity. But the organic cotton is ridiculously soft. Like, buttery soft. It didn't magically cure his crying, but he definitely squirmed less when he wasn't trapped in weird synthetic fabrics, and the envelope shoulders meant I could pull it down over his legs when things got messy instead of dragging a poop-covered collar over his head.

Teething makes everything infinitely worse

Just when I thought we were out of the woods with the newborn screaming phase, month four hit. And with month four came the drool. My god, the drool. It was like living with a tiny, angry St. Bernard.

He was soaking through three bibs an hour and chewing on his own fists until his knuckles were red and raw. The night wake-ups started all over again. I was losing my mind trying to find something he would actually chew on that he couldn't immediately drop on the floor.

Enter the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy. I'm not exaggerating when I say this tiny piece of silicone is basically a member of our family now. I remember being in a Target parking lot, practically in tears myself, running on cold coffee from the day before, and Leo was just losing his absolute mind in the car seat. I dug this panda out of the bottom of my diaper bag—it had some lint on it, whatever, we're building an immune system—and shoved it into his mouth.

Instant, beautiful silence.

The texture on the back of the panda's head just hit the exact right spot on his swollen gums. Plus, it's flat, so his uncoordinated little hands could actually grip it without dropping it every four seconds and screaming for me to pick it back up. My doctor said to put silicone toys in the fridge, not the freezer, because frozen things can genuinely hurt their gums, so I just kept this thing in the butter compartment of my fridge and grabbed it whenever he started melting down.

If you're currently trapped under a drooling, miserable infant who hates everything, do yourself a favor and check out the Kianao teething collection just to find something that will survive being hurled out of a stroller.

Distraction as a survival tool

Sometimes, though, they aren't hungry. They aren't tired. They aren't actively teething. They're just bored and angry about not being able to walk yet.

For those moments, I relied entirely on floor time just so I didn't have to hold a twenty-pound weight anymore. We had the Wooden Baby Gym with Animal Toys set up in the corner of the living room. Look, it's a wooden arch with some stuff hanging off it. Is it going to magically teach your kid calculus and get them into Harvard? No.

But the little hanging elephant and the textured rings gave Leo something to stare at and violently bat his fists at for exactly 14 minutes. And 14 minutes is exactly how long it takes me to microwave my coffee for the third time, drink it standing up at the kitchen counter, and wipe crusted oatmeal off the cabinets. The best part is it's genuinely pretty. I didn't feel the need to hurriedly disassemble it and shove it in a closet when my mother-in-law dropped by unannounced. It just sat there looking aggressively aesthetic.

We all survive the witching hour eventually

I look back at those 3 AM sessions now, bouncing a sweaty infant while desperately watching 90s Johnny Depp be weird on my TV, and it feels like a fever dream. It really does pass. You just kind of exist in this bizarre, sleep-deprived bubble where you're covered in spit-up and wondering if you're doing everything wrong, and then one day, they just... stop crying so much. They sleep. Mostly.

Before your next evening meltdown hits, check out Kianao's full range of sustainable baby essentials to find something that might just buy you five minutes of peace.

My messy answers to your late-night questions

Why does my baby scream every night at the exact same time?
Because they hate us. Kidding. Mostly. My doctor said it's totally normal for babies to have a "witching hour" (which is a lie, it's usually like three hours) in the late afternoon or evening. Their nervous systems are just fried from being awake all day. Try taking them outside or putting them in water. Sometimes just staring at a ceiling fan helps.

Can I put silicone teethers in the freezer?
Okay, so I used to do this with Maya, but then my doctor yelled at me gently because apparently frozen solid objects can bruise their gums and cause frostbite on their lips. Who knew? Now I just throw them in the regular fridge for twenty minutes. Cold enough to numb, soft enough to not cause damage.

When does the screaming phase genuinely end?
With Leo, it peaked around 8 weeks and then slowly started getting better by 3 or 4 months. By 6 months he was a delightfully chubby, happy guy who only yelled when I took his food away. If they're crying literally non-stop for hours and can't be soothed at all, definitely bug your doctor about it. Could be reflux or an allergy. Or they might just be really mad.

Is organic cotton genuinely worth the money for babies?
Honestly, yes, especially if your kid has weird unexplained rashes or eczema like mine did. Regular baby clothes are treated with so much crap, like fire retardants and harsh dyes. When I switched Leo to organic cotton, his skin cleared up so much. Just buy fewer, better pieces and do laundry more often.

What's the best way to clean wooden baby toys without ruining them?
Whatever you do, don't soak them in the sink. I ruined a wooden rattle that way. Wood swells and cracks. Just take a damp cloth with some super mild soap, wipe it down quickly, and let it air dry completely before you give it back to them to shove in their mouth.